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CALLED OUT OF CAPTIVITY TO LIFE - by WORDS, BOOKS, AND POETRY

Luis Rodriguez, nationally recognized author, activist, Poet Laureate of Los Angeles, and leader of others on the journey from trauma to transformation, shares the story of his own transformation in the two YouTube videos below.

In his TEDx talk “Trauma to Transformation” he recites the poem he wrote from jail at age sixteen. It begins with “The calling came to me while I languished in my “room.” It tells of the impact of this “call” on him with the words “It brought me to life out of captivity.” His talk ends with a summary of five steps that anyone can follow in seeking their own escape from captivity.

In “Luis Rodriguez and the Gift of Words” he takes viewers on a walk through two institutions that were crucial to his – and potentially to others’ – journey of liberation: a library, the Central Los Angeles Public Library, and “Tia Chucha’s “ – the Bookstore and Cultural Center he founded as a welcoming place for young people, the kind of place he himself did not have, as a youth caught by the street.

Why this tour, why this video? Luis Rodriguez knows and shares the powers that called him to life: “Words saved my life, books saved my life, poetry… saved my life.”